Joint Analysis of Cortical Area and Thickness as a Replacement for the Analysis of the Volume of the Cerebral Cortex.

ABSTRACT: Cortical surface area is an increasingly used brain morphology metric that is ontogenetically and phylogenetically distinct from cortical thickness and offers a separate index of neurodevelopment and disease. However, the various existing methods for assessment of cortical surface area from magnetic resonance images have never been systematically compared. We show that the surface area method implemented in FreeSurfer corresponds closely to the exact, but computationally more demanding, mass-conservative (pycnophylactic) method, provided that images are smoothed. Thus, the data produced by this method can be interpreted as estimates of cortical surface area, as opposed to areal expansion. In addition, focusing on the joint analysis of thickness and area, we compare an improved, analytic me

SUBMITTER: Winkler AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5972607 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature